Board of Aldermen 07-09-2019 Page 12
PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
Chris Griffin Chris Griffin 56 Tyler Street, Apartment 202, Nashua. I’ve come and spoken in front of you a
couple of times before and | am getting tired of it. For some reason the City of Nashua doesn’t understand
what the Americans With Disabilities Act is and what your responsibilities are thereof. | went to the Mayor’s
Office on June 4" and told him of two problem areas that needed to be taken care for the safety of the
people walking around. Unfortunately only 90% of one of those was taken care of and the other one been
ignored. Last year | talked to you guys before | filed a complaint on the bridge. | had to file a complaint. |
was also talking to your Risk Manager last year about the problems with having snow cleared on certain
sidewalks and cross walks. Instead she accused me of falsifying my disabilities. So | filed a complaint this
Winter, submitted 78 pictures for the Department of Justice to look at, on sidewalks that hadn’t been
cleared properly after 72 hours which is the required time for them to be done and crosswalks which also
had not been maintained at all. The street in question hadn’t been done at all this winter, not at all.
What is the problem? Does the City not understand what the Americans Disability Act is a Law? It’s not
just a thought, something you think about. | mean | go down the streets and there are bushes growing into
the sidewalks and when people put their trash cans there | have nowhere to walk but out in the street
again. | am tired of it; | am sick and tired of it. | will be probably filing a third complaint unless somebody
wants to call me and discuss these problems. And when | file that third complaint, I'll also ask them to look
into whether or not there is a culture of discrimination in the City of Nashua. Because | have experienced
so many other problems through a number of your Departments. And | am tired of it, | am tired of it. You
have my name, my phone number, you’ve got my address. If somebody wants to talk to me before | file
next week; please get in touch with me because | would love to work this out with the City instead of you
having getting fines again. Nobody wants to talk to me | have to assume that you all just don’t care, OK?
| Know a number of you are coming up for election. Is this really what you want the public to know that you
don’t care about your elderly and disabled being able to get around the City safely on the sidewalks?
That’s enough have a great night everybody.
Lori Ortolano Lori Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. | wanted to talk to you a little bit tonight about the Right to
Know Reports that | have been requesting. It is apparent that some of you in the Aldermen level are pretty
upset that | have made the requests that I’ve made to the administration based on e-mails and text
messages. And these reports really served a purpose. | have gleaned some pretty amazing stuff from the
reports that I’ve been able to get from the administration. They were fairly extensive, | asked for an audit
log, which | know the Director didn’t really Know that they could run it, but they did and that was enormously
helpful. It is an accounting measure, an audit measure to look at how each individual is changing property
valuations or working or going into the calculated data to make property evaluation changes; very
interesting piece of information.
| have requested the permit reports and the permit reports were a big disappointment and you know back
from September | was all about permits not being captured and being concerned that we weren't getting
permits captured and valuing them appropriately. Well the permit report really shows me that problem is
still going on and is a problem. The report was wholly disappointing because | received 22 pages of 6.
Print in a PDF file of every permit pulled that had to do with non-value items, including non-value items like
mechanical, electrical and plumbing, which don’t count in the assessments. It was a totally useless report
for me, and | was frustrated by that. But then it made me realize that the Director must’ve sent me the data
the way she gets it. If the data is in this form to her, it is as useless to her as it is to me. It would be very
difficult to account for how your permits are being captured.
Subsequent to getting this report another lady in the neighborhood has been active in this and went to the
Building Permit area, Building Department and asked the gentleman there if they could create a permit
report that would be more useful. He was super helpful, went to IT, knew exactly what we were looking for
and is trying now to help us get a report that we can actually work with and get in a readable form. Just so
we can understand what is happening with permits, but | also went down and spoke to a staff person in
Assessing. | asked what do you run for permits reports that they said monthly we run a report that is given
